


The Man-Eater of Leafy Surrey

by Aeshna etonensis (GMWWemyss)



Category: One Direction (Band), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Bentley motorcars, Bespoke suitings, Cricket, Fanboys - Freeform, Gen, Heritage railways, Humor, Humour, International Fanworks Day 2016, M/M, Video & Computer Games, bollinger, recursive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 19:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6022069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GMWWemyss/pseuds/Aeshna%20etonensis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Upon occasion, Our Lads prefer to be rather the fans (and fen*) than the objects of fannish devotion. Breaks are very good occasions for that.</p>
<p>And Niall, Harry, and (rather too much so) Louis have (and are) perhaps a bit too much invested in Ziam-as-a-concept.<br/>_____<br/>* Nothing to do with That Other Place (Cantab).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Man-Eater of Leafy Surrey

**Author's Note:**

> A very quick bit of foolery, despite the other calls on my time.

* * *

  

* * *

_Payne Dons a Bowler  
_ _Zayn Goes for a Boundary_

* * *

They were even now calling it as a ‘hiatus’. Owing to the extent to which they’d been overworked, abused, denigrated by their own ostensible agents, dragged through the muck, and made risible by the most contemptible, not to say crooked, management in the most crooked, not to say contemptible, industry on earth, they’d be, they felt, entitled to call it as a ‘hiatus’ for the next five ruddy _years,_ should they choose that it last so long.

Harry and Louis were arguing fondly with Niall about what Liam might be up to (Harry suspected a series of Northern Soul All-Nighters Just For Two): Liam had vanished from their ken the moment their obligations subsided for a time, at a rate of knots, invisible for his own dust. All three of them of course knew perfectly well _where_ he had sloped off to, and why, and with whom; but they were content to cap each other’s increasingly wild (if fond) theories of just _what,_ precisely, Liam and Zayn were doing in Surrey during the hiatus, between Zed’s launch obligations as they came up. (They had not yet left off wondering which Marketing and A &R Geniuses had decided that the first solo single for the most visible Muslim in pop culture ought to reference – even without the video – shagging, Paradise, and warzones. Whoever they were, they’d cloth ears, the idiots.) Indeed, in Louis’ case, the theories were becoming not only increasingly outrageous, but increasingly explicit. Harry knew perfectly well that Louis was indulging these only to cause Niall such discomfort he’d cry, ‘ _Pax’,_ and surrender (and bugger off, so that Louis and Harry could put some of the wilder ideas into action); but Harry _was_ becoming the least bit unamused by Louis’ letting his imagination play quite so freely upon the speculated sex-lives of their best mates in their paradisal warzone-boudoir.

Niall, naturally, spotted that, and ran with it. ‘And I suppose it’s t’e two of you are going to be reading and writing fanfic about t’em on your time aff,’ said he, smirking. ‘Ziam-shippin’ eejits as y’ are –’

‘Oh, you do talk a deal of shit, Nialler,’ said Louis, pettishly. ‘We all know _you’ll_ spend your time trying – again – to win at _Grand Ages: Mediæval_ with a start in _Ireland._ And, when you can’t, for the twentieth time, in writing AARs in which you _did._ ’

Niall gave a whisky-throated crow of laughter. ‘It’s t’e two o’ _t’em_ who’ll be on Steam, sure, runnin’ a train simulator, and t’en goin’ aff t’ t’e Peak District for heritage railways –’

‘Train-spotting anoraks, Christ, those two –’

‘– or Payno beggin’ Zayner t’ _read_ t’ him –’

‘Because he’s _illiterate_.’

‘Lou!’

‘Shh, Hazza. They can play “pupil and sir”, too,’ sniggered The Tommo.

Harry chose the politic tactic of pretending confusion. It was commonly the wiser choice when Louis waxed waspish. ‘Are we all,’ said he, glacially slowly, ‘really going to spend our time off being fanboys for a change, after being the objects of it?’

‘Only if it involves role-play,’ riposted Louis with a complementary swiftness.

‘As what,’ scoffed Niall, ‘pretendy parents wit’ an actual child?’

‘Oh, go nick another bird off Ed.’

* * *

In fact, Liam had _not_ ducked away directly and immediately to Surrey, aware though he quite happily was aware that Zayn was already there and waiting for him: even unto skiving off scheduled promotional appearances disguised as press obligations. He had instead gone up to Town, discreetly, to places he was never suspected of patronising.

Not, of course, that these were scandalous destinations. They were merely at odds with the public persona with which he’d been lumbered.

He called at his Savile Row tailors’; his Jermyn Street shirt-maker’s (and at his bootmakers’: the _real_ one, on St James’s Street); his hatter’s; and his umbrella-makers’, on New Oxford Street.

As he did so, the other aspects of his plan, long in preparation, were being put in motion. A box had already been delivered to Zayn, ostensibly from his stylist (as indeed it was, but only once that stylist had been nobbled by Liam), and Zayn had been told that some photographers and that same stylist were arriving at a 2.15 that afternoon – at which time he was to be wearing the delivered outfit – to block out plans for a teaser music video for the _next_ single, and take some reference snaps to see how the outfit came across onscreen.

Precise timing was important to Liam’s plans.

* * *

Louis’ fatal mention of role-play had given Harry the horn to the point at which he was ready to frog-march Niall – politely and affectionately – out of the flat and give Louis all the role-play he could bear; but it had equally set Louis and Niall to wrangling over the subject.

‘– whites, so they can cosplay as cricketers.’ Louis’ voice dripped with a football supporter’s contempt for the game.

Which disdain in him, as Niall pointed out, was absurd and untraditional, and if there was a man, sure, was the boyband Geoff Boycott, wasn’t it Tommo himself whatever, and what for wouldn’t he and Haz....

* * *

Zayn’s eyebrow went up as he examined the contents of the box duly delivered. It was almost a jumpsuit, with a Sixties, Swinging London, Carnaby Street vibe. The sharn the label came up with....

* * *

‘... fookin’ label.’

‘Feckin’ shower,’ agreed Niall, hastily swallowing a long pull on his tin of Murphy’s Draught; ‘wouldn’t even let Zayner admit t’ liking cricket, because it’s “too Desi” – and for fear he’d not pass t’e Tebbit Test.’

Harry possessed his soul in patience. Niall had stopped on long enough that it could only be after luncheon they could shift him.

* * *

After a quick, light luncheon – fittings and snaps weren’t Zayn’s only reason for not eating heavily: he was expecting Liam not later than tea-time, and they Had Plans which involved considerable, if mostly horizontal, exertion – Zayn resignedly got himself dressed in the new ensemble, which had enough leather on it to be mildly kinky even without the accompanying kinky boots.

Liam, of course, was, had Zayn but known it, keeping dead on schedule. He, too, had changed, and was suited and booted, bespoke from head to toe, and had his brolly beside him and his Coke, his bowler, on his knee, as his driver navigated the M25 Orbital.

* * *

At the cost of being eaten out of house and home – not _all_ aspects of their assigned personæ were false, after all –, Louis and Harry had managed to shove Niall out the door at last, at just past 2.10.

‘So,’ grinned Hazza, ‘role-play, yah?’

Louis’ answering grin was positively feral. ‘And unlike those two twats, _I_ don’t have a kink for Avengers role-play.’

* * *

At 2.15 precisely, his stylist walked through the door, promising that the cameraman was coming along in just a moment, love, and she _did_ like the look of the suit now she saw it on him. And, ‘Oh, look through these designs, love, left me bag, back in half a tick’; and she marched right back outside.

Zayn rolled his eyes, but diligently began to flip through the sheaf of papers he’d been handed. He felt a fool, standing there in a sort of glorified jumpsuit that might almost have been a catsuit, looking through – he stopped as he turned to the third page, which had on it only two written words, and written in a hand he knew well.

_Mr Malik-Payne..._

He whirled ’round just as a smirking, surprisingly suave and sophisticated Liam, brolly over arm, hat at a jaunty angle, stepped through the French windows (letting in some bloody cold air, not that either of them was attending at the time).

‘... you’re needed.’

* * *

Louis had predicted that Zayn and Liam should have Avengers-themed sex during the hiatus.

As it happened, he’d been right … and wrong. He had forgotten that there is another Avengers fandom entirely.

Then again, at least he and Harry didn’t have Liam’s sort of payments to their wine merchant, for Bollinger; or the outgoings for running a classic Bentley named, ‘Fido’, to drive away in together.

* * *

 FADE OUT

END OF SHOW

* * *

 

 


End file.
